In the field of biomedical science, it is a key technology to efficiently separate biological cells without damaging them, especially for detecting tumor cells, stem cells, embryos, bacteria, etc. However, the conventional cell control technology, such as optical tweezers, electrophoresis, dielectrophoresis, travelling-wave dielectrophoresis, electrorotation, magnetic tweezers, acoustic traps, and hydrodynamic flows, can not achieve both of high resolution and high flux, wherein although the optical tweezers can achieve high resolution to capture a single particle, it has a control area only about 100 μm2. Moreover, the optical tweezers achieve a light intensity of 107 W/cm2, which is easy to cause local overheating, easy to cause cells dead or inactive. As a result, the optical tweezers is not adapted to long-term operation.
In addition, although the electrophoresis and the dielectrophoresis can achieve high flux, they cannot achieve high spatial resolution, and they cannot control a single cell. Moreover, the dielectrophoresis flow field chip generally has a single function, such as a transmission function or a separation function. If different flow fields are required, it is needed to redesign a new photomask and to perform coating, photolithography, and etching to produce fixed electrodes, which costs much and expend much time and effort.